Available thesis topics

Students interested in topics related to usable security and privacy have the opportunity to do their master theses / bachelor theses / practical research project (Einzelpraktikum) at the Research Institute CODE (Bundeswehr University Munich).

We offer a large variety of topics, including but not limited to:

• Behavioral Biometrics
• Social Engineering
• Usable Security in Smart Homes
• Security and Virtual Reality
• Novel Security Mechanisms based on Gaze
• Novel Authentication Mechanisms

If you are interested in working with us, please get in touch with Dr. Ken Pfeuffer.

Details

Liebe Studieninteressierte,

im Rahmen eines Forschungsprojektes untersuchen wir das Interaktionsverhalten mit Smartphones. Dazu suchen wir Teilnehmer für eine kurze Online-Studie (Bearbeitungsdauer: 5 Minuten).

Um an der Studie teilzunehmen, rufen Sie bitte den folgenden Link mit ihrem Smartphone auf:
Online Studie zu Smartphone Interaktion.

Bei Rückfragen wenden Sie sich bitte an Kai Lebruschka.

Besten Dank für die Teilnahme!

Details

Problem Statement

Usable security for virtual and augmented reality systems (VR/AR) is an area that is relatively underexplored. This thesis aims to investigate the feasibility of authentication mechanisms for VR/AR, while considering the usability and security aspects, specifically potential attacks.

Tasks

• Get familiar with VR/AR hardware and software
• Get familiar with authentication techniques
• Find and study related literature
• Develop\reuse software tracking the body motion and model it in VR
• Design a user study
• Conduct a user study
• Do a statistical evaluation
• Write all down in a thesis

Preferred (but not necessary) qualification

• Knowledge in the area of human computer interaction
• Independent thinking and creative problem solving
• Experience in programming with Unity a plus

Details

Problem Statement

Our homes are currently equipped with ubiquitous computing services, be it our smart phones, smart TVs, Alex, or lifelogging devices. The availability of these devices offers novel opportunities for user authentication, as well as raises privacy concerns and potential novel security attacks. This thesis, aims to explore the raised opportunities and challenges from the availability of smart devices in our daily vicinity.

Tasks

• Get familiar with VR/AR hardware and software
• Get familiar with authentication techniques
• Find and study related literature
• Develop / reuse software tracking the body motion and model it in VR
• Design a user study
• Conduct a user study
• Do a statistical evaluation
• Write all down in a thesis

Preferred (but not necessary) qualification

• Knowledge in the area of human computer interaction
• Independent thinking and creative problem solving
• Experience in programming with Unity a plus

Details

Problem Statement

Rendering the user’s body in virtual reality increases immersion and presence – the illusion of ‘being there’. Recent technology enables determining the pose and position of the body to render them accordingly while interacting within the virtual environment. However, it is unclear how users perceive different avatar styles. Additionally, how any manipulation in the avatars representation would influence the users’ states. In this thesis, we aim to explore the influencing factors of avatar perception.

Tasks

• Get familiar with VR and OptiTracker hardware and software
• Find and study related literature
• Develop / reuse software tracking the body motion and model it in VR
• Design a user study
• Conduct a user study
• Do a statistical evaluation
• Write all down in a thesis

Preferred (but not necessary) qualification

• Knowledge in the area of human computer interaction
• Independent thinking and creative problem solving
• Experience in programming with Unity a plus

Details

Problem Statement

In the 21st Century, mental health disorders like stress, anxiety and depression have become a part of our daily lives. Current digital systems are largely blind to users’ stress states. Systems that adapt to users' states show great potential for creating novel user experiences. However, most approaches for sensing stress, involve obtrusive technologies, such as physiological sensors attached to users' bodies and not yet adapted to VR/AR. In this thesis, we aim to explore unobtrusive sensors for detecting stress, while considering VR/AR setups.

Tasks

• Get familiar with VR/AR hardware and software
• Get familiar with stress and affective computing
• Find and study related literature
• Develop\reuse software tracking the body motion and model it in VR
• Design a user study
• Conduct a user study
• Do a statistical evaluation
• Write all down in a thesis

Preferred (but not necessary) qualification

• Knowledge in the area of human computer interaction
• Independent thinking and creative problem solving
• Experience in programming with Unity a plus

Details

Problem Statement

In the 21st Century, mental health disorders like stress, anxiety and depression have become a part of our daily lives. Current digital systems are largely blind to users’ stress states. Systems that adapt to users' states show great potential for creating novel user experiences. In this thesis, we aim to explore unobtrusive sensors for detecting stress and approaches of stress management in VR/AR setups.

Tasks

• Get familiar with VR/AR hardware and software
• Get familiar with stress and affective computing
• Find and study related literature
• Develop\reuse software tracking the body motion and model it in VR
• Design a user study
• Conduct a user study
• Do a statistical evaluation
• Write all down in a thesis

Preferred (but not necessary) qualification

• Knowledge in the area of human computer interaction
• Independent thinking and creative problem solving
• Experience in programming with Unity a plus

Details

We're looking for a practical research student for user research and UI design in the context of an interdisciplinary research project at the intersection of Physics, Biology, and Computer Science. You will be working as part of a team of researchers and students from these domains.

Tasks:

• UI design and information visualization: Employ a user-centered design process to design a touch-based UI for a portable measurement instrument for cell research, including aspects such as information visualization and measurement control.
• User research: Adequately inform the design choices by assessing and considering needs and preferences of a variety of target user groups.
• Prototyping: Create suitable prototypes for the user-centered design process and for presenting the developed designs to various stakeholders.
• A first design prototype and insights from user interviews exist to get you started.

Requirements:

• Interest in interdisciplinary work, innovative technology, and cell research
• Background in human-computer interaction, information visualization, and/or user interface design
• Practical experience with user-centered design processes and UI/UX design methods and tools
• Teamplayer, independent scientific work, creative problem solving

The project is initially offered as an “Einzelpraktikum” for Master students (Media Informatics, MCI) for one or two semesters (6/12 ECTS, respectively).

Interested?

Send your application with transcript of records and examples of your UI design work via email to Dr. Daniel Buschek.

Details

Effizienz ist ein wichtiger Faktor der Usabilityforschung. Im Allgemeinen beschreibt die Effizienz eines Systems den Aufwand, welchen ein Nutzer erbringen muss, um eine bestimmte Aufgabe zu erfüllen. Effizienz wird meist in Zeit gemessen und evaluiert.

Die wissensbasierte Authentifizierung (bspw. PIN) stellt ein Beispiel für eine solche Aufgabe dar. Als Maß der Effizienz dient hier in der Regel die Zeit, welche für die korrekte Eingabe eines Passwortes/PIN benötigt wird. Neue Erkenntnisse deuten jedoch darauf hin, dass es neben der aktiven Eingabe weitere Phasen gibt, welche sowohl die gemessene als auch die gefühlte Effizienz des Mechanismus beeinflussen. Dabei ist neben der reinen Existenz dieser Phasen auch das Verhältnis der Phasen zueinander maßgebend für die User Experience.

In diesem Einzelpraktikum soll der Einfluss der verschiedenen Authentifizierungsphasen auf die Effizienz untersucht werden. Dafür sollen mehrere Modifikationen eines PIN-Eingabesystems entwickelt und im Feldtest studiert werden.

Aufgaben:

1. Literaturrecherche / selbstständiges Aneignen von Fachwissen
2. Ausarbeitung der zu testenden Konzepte (im Team)
3. Entwicklung der Studiensoftware (Android oder iOS)
4. Planung und Durchführung der Nutzerstudie (im Team)
5. Analyse und Aufbereitung der Studienergebnisse

Bei Erfolg des Projektes besteht die Möglichkeit an einer internationalen Publikation mitzuwirken.

Details

Gaze-based head gestures are a hands-free interaction technique using the occulo-vestibular reflex. A bachelor thesis showed already that this interaction technique works for checking checkboxes and answering dialogs.
This thesis should research whether advanced interaction, such as drag & drop operations, using scrollbars and manipulation of 3D objects, is possible with gaze-based head gestures.

Tasks

• Get familiar with hardware and software
• Find and study related literature
• Develop software supporting the interaction method
• Design a user study
• Conduct a user study
• Do a statistical evaluation
• Write all down in a thesis

Details

The eye does smooth pursuit movements when following moving objects and such movements can be used for gaze-based interfaces. Typically the pursuit targets are generated by software. In contrast this thesis should research the detectibility of pursuit targets in a video.

Tasks

• Get familiar with hardware and software
• Find and study related literature
• Find or create royalty free videos with moving targets
• Develop software extracting target coordinates from the video and detect pursuit movements with the gaze coordinates given by the eye tracker
• Design a user study
• Conduct a user study
• Do a statistical evaluation
• Write all down in a thesis

Details

Description

In this project, we would like to explore how VR can be used to enhance Dance experiences. From a performer perspective, the VR setting may be used to further visualize movements for example. From the observer perspective, it would be interesting to see whether these enhancements are viewed simply on a digital screen or through an HMD as well. Can it happen synchronously or only one-after-the-other?

The aim of this thesis is to explore this topic.

Tasks

• Review of related work on performer/observer interactions in digitally enhanced social viewing/entertainment/public art viewing (e.g. festival, theater) situations
• Creating an application that tracks fully body movements of VR user
• Enhancing dance movements with a design space of visualizations
• Evaluating the viewing experience from a performer and observer perspective in a small study
• Analyze the data collected from the studies and build valid conclusions

Requirements

• Independent scientific work and creative problem solving
• Interest in performing user studies and experiments
• Interest in performing arts
• Interest in VR
• Good experience with c# 3D authoring tools (e.g.,Unity)

Details

Description

In this project, we would like to create a design space for usable security interactions in AR/VR that are also ergonomically appropriate.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how current interactions affect our body long-term and whether they need improvement.

Tasks

• Review of related work on VR/AR interactions from an ergonomic perspective
• Creating an application that tracks fully body movements of VR user
• Evaluating the long-term effect of VR/AR interactions on the 3D model
• Analyze the data collected from the studies and build valid conclusions

Requirements

• Independent scientific work and creative problem solving
• Interest in performing user studies and experiments
• Interest in VR
• Good experience with c# 3D authoring tools (e.g.,Unity)

Details

Description

HMDs are used in collaborative settings, whereby the HMD user is often confronted with real world users that are not actively participating in the virtual or augmented reality. We are interested how these two different sets of people (HMD users vs. real world users) interact with each other, for example during interruption.

Tasks

• Review of related work on collaboration/CSCW/VR/AR/Mixed working environments
• Developing a prototype of a virtual reality environment that tests a number of designs for controlling user interactions
• Conducting an in-depth investigation of the potential and challenges of a virtual environment in a collaborative setting
• Analyze the data collected from the studies and build valid conclusions

Requirements

• Independent scientific work and creative problem solving
• Interest in performing user studies and experiments
• Interest in VR
• Good / Very good experience with c# 3D authoring tools (e.g.,Unity)

Details

In highly automated driving, people are able to not care about driving tasks anymore. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of car interior concept showed the trend of combining bigger interactive screens with the physical car interior to offer novel infotainment system inside vehicles. Such concepts will offer more opportunities for users to deal with non-driving-related tasks such as relaxation or working on their way. However, the car interior with these screens of fixed position and size are neither within the reachable distance in terms of ergonomics, nor beneficial towards group conversation or multiusers. To address such problem, the goal of this research is to explore novel concepts of the car interior as tangible user interface for people wearing VR headset during autonomous driving.

Requirement

• Skills and experience of Unity
• Interest in automotive and tangible user interface

Details

Description

Mid-air gestures enable new and exciting ways of interacting with technology, especially because devices can be interacted with from a distance. Typically, gesturing follows the pointing metaphor, wherein one or both arms are extended to point towards the device, e.g., a display. However, a persistent problem is the expressive and novel nature of the interaction: users may feel uncomfortable gesturing in places wherein they receive unwanted attention. Additionally, prolonged gesturing can lead to fatigue.

The aim of this project is to investigate new approaches to gestural interaction that could make the interaction less visible and less tiresome. In particular, the aim is to investigate gestures that are carried out by holding the arm against the body, instead of reaching out with the arm.

Tasks

• Designing and implementing the overall logic for on-body gestures
• Implementing a prototype public display application
• Designing and conducting a user study

Requirements

• Interest in novel interaction techniques
• Interest in performing user studies
• Good programming skills

Details

Voll immersive Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) wie die Oculus Rift oder die HTC Vive ermöglichen ein direktes Erleben digitaler Daten. Virtuell kann man unter Verwendung dieser Technologien an Orte reisen, die weit entfernt sind, zerstörte Städte als digitale Replikaten erkunden oder Technologien wie den ein Mondfahrzeug erleben. Das deutsche Museum nutzt Virtual Reality um in ihrer Ausstellung den Besucher Dinge zugänglich zu machen. So kann man dort Exponate in ihrem ursprünglichen Kontext erleben, wie etwa die Flugmaschine von Lindbergh.Eine besondere Herausforderung die sich im Museumsalltag ergibt ist der Betrieb des Systems im Zusammen spiel mit den Benutzern. Die internationalen Besucher aller Altersklassen bilden dabei eine sehr diverse Gruppe aus oft naiven Nutzern gegenüber VR Technologie. Die für Museumsinstallationen verfügbaren HMDs stammen aus dem Konsumerbereich und haben den Nachteil, dass sie rein technologisch für Heimanwendungen entwickelt wurden. Zudem ist der Dauerbetreib von HMDs für hohe Besucherzahlen eine Herausforderung, die in den letzten Jahrzehnten Entwicklung von HMD basierten Systemen keine Rolle gespielt hat.Die ausgeschriebene Masterarbeit besteht daher aus drei Teilen.Im ersten Teil wirst du in Zusammenarbeit mit dem deutschen Museum das Nutzererlebnis ind er aktuellen Ausstellung analysieren. Als Grundlage dienen hier für Methoden die aus der Forschung zu Public Displays. Besonders wichtig ist dabei die Analyse nicht auf die Zeit in VR zu begrenzen. Der Nutzerstrom an einer solchen Installaion beginnt mit dem Moment in dem der Nutzer auf das System aufmerksam wird und endet nach der Nutzung des HMDs, wenn der Kunde sein Erlebnis an andere kommuniziert. Dieser Ergebnisse sollen mit einer Literaturrecherche zu Methoden und Gestaltungsrichtlinien von öffentlichen Installationen verbunden werden. Das Ergebnis dieser Analyse ist eine Kategorisierung der Probleme und deren Priorisierung.Im zweiten Teil wirst du zu den erkannten Herausforderungen neuartige Lösungskonzepte erarbeiten. Hierbei können deine Interessen und Fähigkeiten einen wichtigen Einfluss auf das Ergebnis nehmen. Denn im dritten Teil geht es um eine prototypische Umsetzung der erarbeiteten Konzepte für die Installation von VR Hardware im halb öffentlichen Raum. Du wirst die Konzepte in der offizielle VR-Ausstellung des deutschen Museums implementieren und unter realen Bedingungen evaluieren.

Aufgaben:

• Literaturrecherche zu den Themen: Methoden zum Design und Evaluierung von Public Displays. Methoden zum Design und Evaluierung von interaktiven Exponenten in der Öffentlichkeit
• Analyse der Herausforderungen in der VR Ausstellung des Deutschen Museum aus Besuchersicht
• Konzeptionierung von Lösungen zu ausgewählten Problemen
• Implementierung in das VR System
• Evaluierung

Ihre Kompetenzen:

• Sehr gute Kenntnisse im Bereich der User Experience Methoden
• Erfahrung im Durchführen und Auswerten von Nutzerstudien
• Kenntnisse in Unity/ C#
• Erfahrung in der Arbeit mit VR Technologien
• Bereitschaft Studien im deutschen Museum durchzuführen
• Interesse am Umgang mit Menschenn

Details

Description

Mesh simplification intends to preserve the visual appearance of a 3D model while reducing its number of faces. Due to the rise of mobile computing and VR applications, mesh simplification becomes a critical phase in 3D modeling for reducing the rendering complexity of a model. A 3D model designer initially starts with a high-quality model and then simplify its faces using modern 3D software, such as Blender, Maya and etc.

However, aggressively using mesh simplification function in the software quickly leads to visible defects, for instance, holes in the grid, jagged edge, and other similar errors. Thereby a designer must carefully dealing with these result and sometimes manually fix these errors.

In this thesis, you will perform user-centered research to investigate elicitation process, uncertainty and ambiguity of human preferences while mesh simplification in 3D modeling.

Tasks

You should:

• Conduct extensive literature review regarding 3D modeling, human preferences, mesh simplification, and other related fields
• Be able to understand the fundamental ideas of existing mesh simplification functions in industrial software
• Design appropriate user studies and corresponding evaluation strategies or benchmarks separately for general users and expert designers
• Use existing or develop (if necessary) 3D program(s) to conduct the designed user studies
• Perform well-structured evaluation and summarizing all outcomes in a written thesis

Requirements

• Interest in 3D geometric modeling with a background in related software and a programming language
• Understanding the basics of human-computer interaction research approaches
• Concept development and designing appropriate user studies
• Independent scientific work, creative problem solving

Note that the thesis initially starts with biweekly meetings for literature and development discussion in the first two or three monthsand then switch to weekly meeting for user study and result evaluation discussion.

Interested?

Send your application with a transcript of records, examples of your designed models or programming projects (GitHub page is ideal) via email to Changkun Ou.

Initial Reading List

• Marks, J., Ruml, W., Ryall, K., Seims, J., Shieber, S., Andalman, B., Pfister, H. (1997). Design galleries. In Proceedings of the 24th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques - SIGGRAPH'97 (pp. 389-400). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/258734.258887
• Hoppe, H., DeRose, T., Duchamp, T., McDonald, J., & Stuetzle, W. (1993). Mesh optimization. In Proceedings of the 20th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques - SIGGRAPH'93 (Vol. 86, pp. 19-26). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/166117.166119
• Garland, M., & Heckbert, P. S. (1997). Surface simplification using quadric error metrics. In Proceedings of the 24th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques - SIGGRAPH'97 (pp. 209-216). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/258734.258849
• Ju, T., Losasso, F., Schaefer, S., & Warren, J. (2002). Dual contouring of hermite data. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 21(3), 339-346. https://doi.org/10.1145/566654.566586

Useful Link

• Information on Master Theses
• Thesis Template

Details

Problem Statement

A stylus allows designers and artists to provide artistic digital designs. Modern tablets (Surface Pro, IPad) support a stylus, allowing users to design anywhere.

However, creating 3D models can be difficult on 2D displays. 3D modelling requires users to navigate a lot in 3D space - even for drawing simple 3D lines. This project investigates how this process can be more efficient. The idea of this project is to better merge the two processes of navigation and creation.

In this project, the goal is to explore new methods of 3D input in 2D design applications, by using both stylus and multitouch input of the user. The two main work-tasks will be 1) creating a basic drawing prototype with new interaction methods, and 2) to explore what kind of new interactions are possible.

Tasks

• Survey of related work
• Conceptual design of methods that allow users drawing of 3D sketches
• Design and implement a drawing application that integrates the methods
• Evaluation of the application in a user study
• Report of the project into the thesis

Preferred (but not necessary) qualification

• Knowledge in the area of human computer interaction
• Interest in design, drawing, and artistry
• Experience in programming of 2D/3D GUI (E.g., Java processing)

Details

Problem Statement

Companies such as Oculus, Apple, or Microsoft are working on AR devices that may become an integral part in the daily life of the future. How the user interface may look like is still an open question, it may involve novel methods of input. In this project, we explore the use of eyes for interaction with the digital augmented information. How can the eyes be utilised to interact with digital information that are laid over the real world?

In general eye based interaction has been long investigated in the field of human-computer interaction. The eyes are one of the fastest input modalities, and work in unity with the user’s hands. Future AR devices, through glasses, have a high potential to have eye-tracking integrated and it is therefore imaginable that the eyes play an integral part in the interaction with the augmented reality.

The project is exploratory, and strongly focuses on the interaction design and building of prototypes. It involves iterative prototyping from basic ideas to mature user interfaces with close feedback rounds with the team (e.g., 1 or 2 times per week). It is also possible to get hands-on support on the implementation from team members. Ideas can be generated quickly with the team, and evaluated quickly with small prototypes. The goal is to create the most dynamic, fastest, and world-class user interface for AR. Inspirations can come from various media, e.g. Minority Report, IronMan, or Ready Player One.

Tasks

• Comprehensive survey of related work
• Setup of an AR device with integrated eye tracker (e.g., Hololens)
• Iterative development of the interaction concepts (with the team) and software prototypes (Unity c-sharp)
• Evaluation of final prototypes
• Analysis and report of study design

Preferred qualifications

• Interest UI design and Unity programming
• Scientific work and UI research
• Interest in novel input modalities and devices

Suggested reading

• Ken Pfeuffer, Jason Alexander, Ming Ki Chong, Yanxia Zhang, and Hans Gellersen. 2015. Gaze-Shifting: Direct-Indirect Input with Pen and Touch Modulated by Gaze. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology (UIST '15) https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2807442.2807460
• Ken Pfeuffer, Benedikt Mayer, Diako Mardanbegi, and Hans Gellersen. 2017. Gaze + pinch interaction in virtual reality. In Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Spatial User Interaction (SUI '17) https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3131277.3132180
• Mikko Kytö, Barrett Ens, Thammathip Piumsomboon, Gun A. Lee, and Mark Billinghurst. 2018. Pinpointing: Precise Head- and Eye-Based Target Selection for Augmented Reality. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18) https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3173655

Details

Users’ home environments are increasingly equipped with “smart” devices, which are increasingly capable of accessing, collecting and processing sensitive personal data. This opens a need for authentication on these devices. However, conventional authentication mechanisms are oftentimes not suitable for smart devices. As an example, entering secure (i.e. lengthy) passwords on a remote control for a smart TV may not be feasible. Related work suggested to transfer passwords to a 3D space (i.e., placing objects in virtual environments). We envision this to be transferred to actual, real environments (i.e., users’ smart homes). Possible “passwords” may include, but are not limited to, interaction with a secret chain of devices (e.g. light switch, remote control for TV, fridge) or interaction with a particular devices while considering context (e.g., choosing a certain TV channel at a certain time). This may be included in users’ usual interaction and routines to ensure usability and memorability. The theoretical password space is huge (i.e., high amount of devices, hence high amount of combinations) - however, so called “sweet spots” may evolve.

This thesis aims at developing a new, scalable authentication mechanism for smart environments based on a) novel possibilities for input and b) novel authentication factors (e.g. behavioural biometrics).

Tasks:

• Review of related work
• Analysis & Concept:
• find suitable devices (not necessarily “smart”)
• find suitable interactions
• Develop and evaluate a concrete authentication mechanism for a smart home environment
• Analysis, reflection, and discussion of the outcomes

Requirements:

• Micro controller programming (sensors, raspberry pi)
• Interest in designing and conducting user studies
• Independent scientific work and creative problem solving

Related Work:

Alsulaiman, F. A., & El Saddik, A. (2008). Three-dimensional password for more secure authentication. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and measurement, 57(9), 1929-1938.

Kolhe, V., Gunjal, V., Kalasakar, S., & Rathod, P. (2013). Secure authentication with 3D password. International Journal of Engineering Science and Innovative Technology (IJESIT), 2(2), 99-105.

Details

To add an additional layer of security to knowledge-based authentication mechanisms, security questions oftentimes serve as additional mean to identify the legitimate user (in particular in cases such as resetting the password). Related work already suggested dynamic security questions [1] or location-based questions [2]. We believe that this concept may be promising to transfer to new fields. With this thesis, we aim at transferring the concept of security questions in the broader scope of smart environments. As an example, devices such as smart speakers could start a dynamic “Q&A” session to verify the legitimate user. Contents of questions may vary according to current contexts or previous interactions while preserving users’ privacy (i.e. do not put sensitive questions!).

Tasks:

• Comprehensive survey of related work
• Get familiar with hardware and software
• Conceptual design of authentication mechanisms using security questions for smart environments, considering:
• Device & interaction modality (e.g., smartphone, smart TV, smart speaker, etc)
• Content of questions? (e.g. recent events? what about privacy-sensitive content?)
• Implementation of a concrete prototype
• Evaluation of security as well as usability of the prototype

Requirements:

• Independent scientific work and creative problem solving
• Interest in designing and conducting user studies (also: wizard-of-oz)

Related Work:

[1] Alina Hang, Alexander De Luca, and Heinrich Hussmann. I know what you did last week! Do you?: Dynamic security questions for fallback authentication on smartphones. In Proceedings of the 33rd SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). Seoul, Korea, April 18 - April 23, 2015. ACM, New York, NY, USA.

[2] Alina Hang, Alexander De Luca, Matthew Smith, Michael Richter, and Heinrich Hussmann. Where Have You Been? Using Location-Based Security Questions for Fallback Authentication. In Eleventh Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2015) (pp. 169-183).

Details

Problem Statement

Virtual Reality is gaining more and more importance in our daily lives as we allow ourselves to be immersed in a simulated environment. Among its many useful application, VR can be used to carry out meetings among group of people or even be used in E-learning where the participants can be aided. Gatherings can also extend to examples such as 'Skype Session with family', 'Gathering with friends' etc. During such group meetings, where the environment is essentially a multi user environment involving interaction between participants, it is important that each participant can be completely immersed in the environment and for that, interaction and visualization techniques need to be developed. The aim of the thesis is to explore the interaction and visualization techniques for social gatherings.

Tasks

• Comprehensive survey of related work
• Get familiar with hardware and software
• Conceptual design of interaction and visual techniques between avatars that enhance the virtual immersion
• Carry out a initial survey using 'Oculus Go' to determine the necessary interaction features for enhancement
• Implementation of the design which successfully integrates the various interface design to enhance group communication in VR
• Evaluation of the design through a user study

Preferred (but not necessary) qualification

• Knowledge and interest about VR
• Able to work independently
• Unity Programming

Interested students should get in touch with Radiah Rivu (radiahrivu_at_gmail.com)

Details

Generative music systems are becoming more and more relevant nowadays. In the near future Artificial Intelligences will become evenly equal partners in music making scenarios. Therefore we have to find ways to interact with systems that are able to make their own decisions and have their own creative mind. Established communication with human musicians are eye-contact, gestures, verbal expressions.How can we communicate with digital musicians, how can they communicate with humans?

Tasks:

• Development of interaction concepts for the handling of AI/generative systems in a musical context.
• Implementation of a functional prototype that demonstrates the basic concept.
• Conducting a study with students.

Requirements:

• Interest and experience in music theory.
• Experience in programming and hardware-prototyping.
• Ambition to delve into hardware and software.

Suggested Reading:

• Yamaha Artificial Intelligence (AI) Transforms a Dancer into a Pianist
• Mateas, M. (2001). Expressive AI: A hybrid art and science practice. Leonardo, 34(2), 147-153.
• De Mantaras, R. L., & Arcos, J. L. (2002). AI and music: From composition to expressive performance. AI magazine, 23(3), 43.
• Francois, A. R., Chew, E., & Thurmond, D. (2007, June). Visual feedback in performer-machine interaction for musical improvisation. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on New interfaces for musical expression (pp. 277-280). ACM.

Details

User interfaces facilitate interaction with digital content. Concepts such as "Undo" make it possible to reverse actions that did not have the desired effect. But what would interfaces and the corresponding interactions look like if irreversible actions were central components of interaction design? In this thesis a design exploration should be performed that focusses on materials like paper which affordances lead to actions such as tearing, crumpling, folding, punching holes, etc.. How can familiar concepts such as punch cards or origami help to design intelligible interaction metaphors, that create commitment to the actions we as users perform with technology? What impact will such concepts have on prospective actions?

Tasks:

• Concept Development.
• Design Experimentations.
• Prototyping.
• Evaluation in form of a User Study.

Requirements:

• Prototyping Experience.
• Interest in Design and UX Design.

Suggested Reading:

• Zimmerman, John, Jodi Forlizzi, and Shelley Evenson. "Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI." Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 2007.
• Auger, James. "Speculative design: crafting the speculation." Digital Creativity 24.1 (2013): 11-35.
• Cox, Anna L., et al. "Design frictions for mindful interactions: The case for microboundaries." Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2016.

Details



Kooperationsprojekt mit dem Lehrstuhl Empirische Pädagogik für und Pädagogische Psychologie (Prof. Frank Niklas)

Mitarbeit im ERC-Projekt 'App-based Learning for Kindergarten Children at Home' (Learning4Kids)

Kinder erwerben wesentliche mathematische und schriftsprachliche Kompetenzen schon vor der Einschulung. Dieser Kompetenzerwerb vollzieht sich im Familienkontext und Kindergartenkinder und ihre Familie können dabei unterstützt werden.Ziel des Projekts 'Learning4Kids' ist es einerseits, sinnvolle Lernapps für Tablets zu identifizieren und teils neu zu entwickeln und diese dann den Familien zur Verfügung zu stellen. Andererseits sollen die Familien regelmäßig an die Nutzung der Tablets erinnert und ihnen über das eigene Nutzungsverhalten und das durchschnittliche Nutzungsverhalten der Stichprobe Rückmeldung gegeben werden. Learning4Kids überprüft dann langfristig, ob über diesen Ansatz, ein positiver Einfluss auf die kurz- und längerfristige Kompetenzentwicklung von Kindern ausgeübt werden kann.

Aufgaben und Erwartungen

1. Erarbeitung und Umsetzung eines App Konzepts zur Integration der verschiedenen Bausteine des Learning4Kids Projekts
2. Selbstständige Recherche zu verschiedenen Lösungen zur Datenspeicherung, Datenvisualisierungen, Accountmanagement etc.
3. Eigenständige Kontaktaufnahme zu beteiligten Projektpartnern und IT Diensten innerhalb der LMU
4. Evaluierung der App in Bezug auf Funktionsfähigkeit sowie Problemen und Limitationen
5. Abschlussarbeit oder Projektbericht als Dokumentation der Applikation

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Smartphones are people's constant companions in their all day life, counting of a multitude of interactions per day. To unlock the smartphone, people commonly employ mechanisms such as pin entry or fingerprint sensing. This work aims to exploit these required interactions by combining it with a vocabulary learning tool, where each unlocking event enables the user to learn a new word of a chosen language.

Tasks:

1. Extensive literature review on common smartphone authentication techniques and learning applications
2. Conceptualization and sketching of different interaction techniques for vocabulary learning through smartphone unlocking
3. Implementation of a simple vocabulary learning application to run on the lockscreen (preferably Android-based)
4. Implementation of different vocabulary learning interaction techniques coupled to authentication mechanisms
5. Design and execution of a user study to evaluate interaction performance, user experience, and learning outcome
6. Analysis & evaluation of the study results

If this project is successful, you will get the chance to contribute to an international publication.

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Description

Developing an Android app for predicting personality traits via smartphone usage

In the PhoneStudy project, an interdisciplinary team consisting of psychologists, statisticians, and computer scientists develop an Android app, which tracks and logs the user’s smartphone behaviour to predict personality traits. For example, we track the number of users’ calls, sms, and app usage, which might predict how extraverted the user is. The app will be distributed among participants in spring 2018, which will then use the app for several months. There are several tasks for media informatics students in this project (cf. below), from which you can choose. Please contact me when you are interested in the project and will give you more details.

Tasks

You can choose between different tasks:

• Configuring and working on the server, its scalability and stability, as well as the data base (MariaDB)
• Working on the internal web based front end of the server, which depicts the current status of participants and logged data
• Further develop the app: integrating new features and fixing current bug
• Quality management: Developing automatic testing scripts

Minimum requirements

• Interested in interdisciplinary projects
• High communication skills, especially willing to communicate interdisciplinary
• Able to work independently
• Previous experience with server configuration, (Android) app development, web development, data bases (depending on the chosen task)
• High frustration tolerance

Details

Usability is an important factor in the development of open source software (OSS).The challenges regarding the evaluation of usability for OSS are for example thatdevelopers work in a distributed manner and during different working hours.In our previous work we have conducted usability studies with the Eclipse 4diac IDE,a framework for distributed industrial automation systems.

In these studies we have collected detailed interaction data in ECL format.Manual evaluation of this data is extremely work intesive but can be automated.Your task is to facilitate this automation by creating a processing tool thatextracts the relevant features from the recorded interaction data.

Your work consists in:

• literature review in data processing, text analysis, ECL, etc.
• design and implement an automated processing tool for the data
• test the viability software for future research, including recording and alaysing new data
• writing a thesis and presenting your results to an audience

You need:

• Strong communication skills in english
• Strong programming skills

Details

Machine Learning algorithms find spreading use in normal software development.Tuning these algorithms to yield optimal solutions can be a daunting task though,heavily reliant on experience or trial and error.

There are essentially three main approaches for this challenge:

• full automation, e.g. in Google's AutoML, where optimal configurations are learned using again machine learning
• rule based where experts try to identify more or less general rules for improving ML performance
• interactive using human intelligence

This thesis focusses on the last of those three: Your task is to create visualizations that represent the current and prevous configurations of an ML algorithm. The goals is to help a software development make an informed decision how to further tune the algorithm based on its configuration history.

Your work consists in:

• Brainstorming how to visualize configurations
• Prototyping one or more visualizations
• Evaluating the prototypes in a user study
• Writing a thesis and presenting your results to an audience
• (Optional) co-writing a research paper

You need:

• Strong communication skills in german and/or english
• Good knowledge of at least one machine learning algorithm
• Knowledge of information visualization techniques

Details

Communication is a key challenge when collaborating on large, complex software systems.In this thesis you will explore how phyiscal objects can help developers communicatethe architecture and design of their software to other developers and non-experts.

Your work consists in:

• Brainstorm visualization ideas
• Design and prototype physical artifacts that represent software design
• Evaluate these designs regarding their benefits for communication and comprehension
• Writing a thesis and presenting your results to an audience
• (optional) Co-writing a research paper

You need:

• Strong communication skills in german and/or english
• A good understanding of software architecture, design, and engineering
• Basic knowledge of rapid prototyping, e.g. CAD, 3D printing, etc.
• Good knowledge of user testing methods

Details

The intent and the steering behavior of the driver is important to prevent accidents on the highway. During the thesis you will collect driver information on the driving simulator and then use this data to predict the driver’s driving intent.

This thesis includes:

• Literature review
• Driving data collection with the simulation tool Carmaker or Unity and Head pose/Eye tracking with Tobii
• Evaluating the data to find the best features to predict driving behavior
The thesis might be written in English or German.
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